Matthew John Fletcher   He loved Rose, he married Myrtle. The seeds of the latter event were sown in that period towards the end of his final year at university when the accumulated disappointment he had suffered at the hands of Rose had made him particularly vulnerable. Myrtle filled the vacuum which we are told […]

Chloë Ashby   I hadn’t heard from my mother for a month. Normally she left a voicemail once a week, informing me of her and Stanley’s whereabouts, occasionally asking how I was and even more occasionally asking after my own husband. Then, all of a sudden, she announced she was in London. Could we meet […]

Clare Reddaway   The pebbles hurt the soles of her feet. She doesn’t care. Hurting is good. Pain is what she deserves. She steps into the water. The sea is deceptive. The shallow, nibbling waves with their light froth of white are not the warm waters of the Aegean. They freeze her ankles, her shins. […]

Carolyn Stockdale   At 8.20am every day, a woman with church hair climbs astride a bicycle. Not an ordinary bicycle, but a strange, fold-up contraption, built for the commuter of the 1980s to whip from a raincoat at London Bridge and zip over cobbles to the Strand. It labours heavily now through the leaves, its […]

Amanda Staples   Joe bowed his head. He would not let Mr Collins see the tears that were pooling in his eyes. ‘Joseph,’ Mr Collins prompted. The headmaster waited, then gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You leave me no other option. You understand I cannot tolerate aggressive behaviour. I do not issue suspensions lightly, but all […]

Since graduating with a degree in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, Chloë Ashby has been working in journalism. She is an associate editor in the Books department at Monocle and a freelance arts writer based in London. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, FT Life & Arts, 1843 and others. In 2019, Chloë graduated from the […]

Clare Reddaway has been writing short stories for some years, having discovered she likes the buzz of reading in front of an audience (the audience claims to like it too). She has read her stories at events and festivals throughout the south west, where she lives, and she runs a live short literature event in […]

Carolyn Stockdale lives in West Lancashire with her husband and three sons. She has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Liverpool and worked as a company secretary in both London and the North West, before starting an MA in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University, where she is also intern for […]

Matthew John Fletcher is a British writer, currently working on his first novel. His short fiction has been published in STORGY, Horla, The Fiction Pool and The First Line. As an undergraduate he studied English and German Literature, but has tried not to let this deter him from putting pen to paper, or rather, fingers […]

Amanda has the usual pile of stuff she can’t look at without a pot of tea and a whisky chaser, but keeps it to remind her that writing is a process; there is always much to learn and improve upon. Amanda hones her craft by dabbling in poetry, limericks and flash fiction, and more seriously […]